The British director Paul Greengrass is to direct a film based on the events of 9/11, the third film project by a major Hollywood studio to tackle the subject.
With the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, Hollywood and some television networks are putting aside the reticence they have shown in dealing with the events of 2001.
The film, provisionally titled Flight 93, will follow the story of the doomed United Airlines flight that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania and will be made by Universal Studios with a budget of $15-million.
Paramount Studios has already announced that Oliver Stone will direct a film about the two New York Port Authority workers trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Centre. Starring Nicolas Cage, the as-yet untitled film will begin production in October.
Colombia Pictures also has a 9/11 project in the works, having optioned the rights to 102 Minutes, a book by two New York Times reporters that deals with the time between the first plane’s impact and the collapse of the second tower.
Television is also getting in on the act, with the ABC network scheduled to screen an eight-hour mini-series about 9/11 this autumn.
While Hollywood has traditionally been circumspect about dealing with sensitive and tragic events in the recent past, history shows that once one studio goes with a subject, the rest are sure to follow.
Although films set in the Vietnam war were released while it was being waged, it was not until after the war that films dealing critically and, in some cases, realistically, with the war emerged. The Deer Hunter, Born on the Fourth of July, also directed by Oliver Stone, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now all provided some sort of cathartic relief from the trauma caused by the war.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Hollywood studios withdrew from release several films that included hijackings and scenes of planes crashing into buildings. The most high-profile was the Warner Bros film Collateral Damage, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Spider-Man was edited to remove scenes showing the twin towers.
But the coming weeks will see the release of two films that show traumatic events taking place on board planes, following on the heels of the television drama Lost, about a plane which crashes on an island.
Flightplan, due for release at the end of September in the US and a month later in the UK, stars Jodie Foster as a mother whose daughter goes missing on a flight. Most of the action is set on board the plane.
This week also sees the US release of Red Eye, directed by Wes Craven, who made the Scream series of horror spoofs. Red Eye is the story of a woman who is kidnapped while on a flight. The film will be released in the UK on September 2.
Greengrass, who came to prominence with his television dramatisation The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, and Bloody Sunday, a vérité-style dramatisation of the events in Northern Ireland in 1972, recently found mainstream Hollywood success with The Bourne Supremacy.
But his 9/11 project promises to reflect the director’s roots in drama-documentary and his affinity with the work of the great British documentary director Alan Clarke.
The 90-minute film, first reported by the trade magazine Variety, will cover events on the flight in real-time, and will be partly improvised by an ensemble cast filmed using hand-held cameras.
It is not known how closely the film will stick to the mythology of the flight, including the famous line ”Let’s roll”, allegedly shouted by passengers as they moved to tackle the hijackers.
The film was green-lighted by Universal and the British production company Working Title, following a 20-page treatment submitted by Greengrass. The director argued that as the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, film should take its place in marking the events. – Guardian Unlimited Â